Aging Is Not Just Decline It Is a Wound That Never Heals
Aging may not be a slow and passive wearing out of the body. According to a new Nature Communications paper, it may instead resemble a wound that never finishes healing.
In this perspective article, Mikołaj Ogrodnik proposes a clear idea. As we grow older, our tissues behave as if they are stuck in the early inflammatory phase of injury repair. The signals that normally help the body respond to damage never fully switch off.
Inflammation, immune cell infiltration, cellular senescence, lipid accumulation, and tissue remodeling are classic features of wound healing. They are also hallmarks of aging tissues. The difference is simple. With age, this process never resolves. Repair does not complete. Regeneration does not fully happen.
The article also highlights an important paradox. Many interventions known to slow aging, such as calorie restriction, mTOR inhibition, or senolytic strategies, can also delay wound healing. This overlap suggests that aging and repair share deeply connected biological pathways.
Rather than treating aging as a separate process, this work reframes it as a chronic misactivation of damage response mechanisms. The challenge ahead is clear. How can we reduce harmful and persistent inflammation without blocking the body’s ability to heal when it truly needs to?
This conceptual shift lies at the heart of current longevity research. Marvin Edeas, founder of the World Mitochondria Society and founder of the Targeting Longevity meeting, has repeatedly stated that aging should be understood as a dynamic and potentially reversible process, not a fixed destiny. This vision aligns closely with the message of this paper.
Mikołaj Ogrodnik is one of the invited speakers at Targeting Longevity, where aging will be discussed not as simple decline, but as stalled healing at the cellular and tissue level.
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The 2nd World Congress on Targeting Longevity is taking place on April 8-9, 2026, in Berlin, Germany.